


Come into my Castle

by Georgethecat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aemon the Dragonknight - Freeform, Children kissing, F/M, Innocent games, Queen Naerys, R plus L equals J
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 09:38:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11415210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Georgethecat/pseuds/Georgethecat
Summary: Come into my Castle is a favourite game of the Stark children. Jon doesn't often get to be the knight who gets the lady, but this time he does.





	Come into my Castle

**Author's Note:**

> Set one year before the events of A Game of Thrones take place.

“Last one up has to sit next to Septa at lessons!” 

The words were barely out of Arya’s mouth before she darted off across Winterfell’s training yard, Bran on her heels. 

Jon was nearly bowled over by the two younger Starks as they raced towards the Broken Tower. Bran skidded to a halt in front of his half-brother. “C’mon Jon,” Bran said, tugging Jon’s arm. “We’re hiding Sansa’s doll!” 

Jon shook his head. He still had the last of his chores to finish up. He watched Bran and Arya run off into the tower. When he finally finished piling the last of the logs in the logpile, he looked up towards the tower. He was certain that Bran nor Arya had come down from the tower, so he decided to investigate. Besides, Robb was in Wintertown with Lord Stark. Jon had been bitter that he hadn't been asked to join their father. But Robb was the heir to Winterfell and needed to meet with the people of the North. A bastard accompanying them wouldn’t have been right, he’d overheard Lady Stark say. 

The words had stung and Jon had supposed he took it out on the wood as he chopped through it with an axe. Sir Rodrik had come over and told Jon he’d break the axe handle if he kept swinging that way. 

Now that he was done his chores, though, it would be fun to play with his half-siblings again. When he reached the top of the staircase of the Broken Tower, he could hear Bran, Arya and Sansa’s voices. 

“Do I get a turn?” Arya was asking Sansa. Sansa was holding her new doll, the one that Bran and Arya had stolen from her earlier. He remembered father giving it to her. Sansa was the only one who got dolls as Arya had destroyed all of hers when she was little. Whenever Lord Stark would visit a city in the North, he would bring the children each a gift. Even Jon would sometimes get a present, often given to him out of sight of Lady Stark. 

Arya was standing over Sansa’s shoulder as the older girl cradled the doll. “No,” Sansa said. “I would have given you a turn, but you stole her from me.” Arya turned from her sister, and spotted Jon. She grinned. 

“Bran, Sansa, Jon’s here. What do you want to play?” The other two looked up from what they were doing. Bran returned Jon’s smile, but Sansa had a sad look on her face. 

Bran suggested the play with sticks and Arya said they should take turns hitting each other, but it was Sansa who piped up and asked them to play her favourite game, Come into My Castle. That game was Bran and Arya’s favourite, too, but they liked being the knights, just as Jon did. They all agreed and the younger two ran down to get some tourney swords while Jon and Sansa waited in the tower. 

“I’m Ser Arthur Dayne,” Bran shouted from the stairs. 

“I’ll be Nymeria,” Arya called after him. 

Their footsteps could be heard clacking down the stairs as Sansa asked Jon who he will be. “I will be Aemon the Dragonknight.” 

“I will be Queen Naerys,” replied Sansa matter-of-factly. “This can be our daughter,” she said as she looked down at the doll. “Or son, if you would prefer.”

“It matters not to me,” Jon said. He had never thought of sons or daughters, in fact. Well, he had, as Theon often talked about how he never shot his seed into any of the Wintertown whores as he could get them with child. Jon didn’t want to get any woman with child if she wasn’t his lady wife, and what woman would want to marry a bastard? 

Sansa motioned Jon to sit next to her. She handed him the doll, showing him how to cradle it properly. Jon had held Bran and Arya a few times when they were small, and Rickon even less, as he was always with Lady Stark. Still, Jon did as Sansa suggested. “I think I like the name Lyanna. What do you think?”

Jon wondered why she chose that name. Lord Eddard almost never talked about his sister, who Jon supposed would be his aunt. Arya had pestered Old Nan enough one morning over their steaming bowls of porridge. “She was the beauty of the North back then,” Old Nan told the young Starks. “Not one could match her — that is until our lovely Sansa was born.” 

Jon remembered how Arya had rolled her eyes, but also how he had never noticed how Sansa look as though she had been carved from a weirwood tree. Her hair was much brighter than her lady mother’s and she sometimes had smiles for him, when she wasn’t with Lady Stark. 

“Aye,” Jon pulled himself back to the present, unsure if he still liked this game, after all. Holding a pretend baby was silly when he would never really get to hold a real babe of his own. 

“You should say her name is pretty,” Sansa continued, nudging him gently. 

“What?” 

“Girls like to be told they have pretty names by the knights they love.”

“Oh.” Jon looked down at the doll and wondered if a real baby would even think its name was nice. She reached for the doll and took it back from him, pretending to put it in a cradle. She sat back down next to him and they sat in stony silence for a few minutes before Sansa started singing. Jon asked her what she was doing and she just laughed and told him she was singing a lullaby to help the baby go to sleep. 

Jon recognized the song after a few lines. Jenny’s song — truth be told, he liked it much better than the Bear and the Maiden Fair. When she stopped singing, she sat a little closer to him. Jon shifted in his seat, edging towards the end of the bench. He hoped no one saw them sitting this closely.

“Let’s pretend you have won a great tourney! What will you do, dragonknight?”

Jon shrugged his shoulders. “But I haven’t even fought anything yet…”

Sansa sighed. “It’s just a game, silly!”

She was looking at him expectantly and so Jon tried his hardest to remember what knights did for their ladies after a great tourney. They gave them flowers or crowned them…  
“Hmm,” he mumbled as he looked around. There were some dried old flowers in the corner under the window and some pussy willows, so he tied them together while Sansa pretended to sip tea.

“Here are your flowers,” Jon said, handing them to her. Sansa didn’t take the flowers. She lowered her head a little, and Jon thrust it on her head before standing back over by the window. 

Sansa neatly adjusted the crown while Jon wondered what detour Arya and Bran must have gotten up to — most likely, they were raiding the kitchen stores for sweets. 

“Have you ever kissed a girl?” Jon’s eyes widened at Sansa’s question. He had not kissed any girls at all. At three and ten he already knew what kissing could lead to. 

“That’s my own business, thank you,” he curtly replied. Sansa flushed and looked away. 

“I only meant… Aemon and Naerys would kiss after the tournament…” 

Jon felt embarrassed so he kept to himself by the window. He didn’t turn back until he realized Sansa was standing right next to him. 

“I have not been kissed by any boys, and I would like to know what it is like.” She said it so matter-of-factly, as though it were another lesson. Jon felt his heart race. What if someone were to see them? 

“As Aemon and Naerys?” He asked, softly. Sansa nodded and closed her eyes. Jon leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. At first, it just felt like their lips were only just touching and he wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. But then he felt Sansa’s tongue on his lips and his stomach twisted into a little knot. He parted his own lips and heard Sansa hitch her breath a little. 

He heard the sound of feet pounding up the stairs and they pushed away from one another. Jon wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jerkin. He glanced over at Sansa and her lips looked redder than before. 

“We got the dessert pastries!” Bran hollered. 

“And the swords!” Arya responded, waving wooden swords as they entered the Broken Tower room again. Bran dumped an array of pastries that he’d been holding under his cloak. Sansa clapped her hands. “You brought me lemon cakes!” 

Jon picked up a chocolate filled pastry and bit into it. Just then, a horn sounded. Jon peaked out the window and saw that Lord Eddard and Robb had returned. He wolfed down the rest of the pastry and made for the stairs. 

“Bye!” He waved to his half-siblings before stopping at the top of the stairs. Bran and Arya waved back as they continued to stuff their faces. Sansa, perhaps, hadn’t been listening as she was back to playing with her doll. “Bye, Sansa,” Jon said. 

“Bye, Jon.”

Jon nodded and ran down the stairs to find out how Robb’s lesson in lordship had gone.


End file.
